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      in Movies

      Anouk Aimée’s Subtle Seductiveness in ‘A Man and a Woman’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’

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      The French star created characters who could be fantasies or enigmas, but they always intrigued, even when she was miscast in Hollywood.These days it’s dicey to refer to a female performer as “a thinking man’s sex symbol,” but back in the ’60s and ’70s, when such phrases were dispensed profligately, the French actress Anouk Aimée, who died on Tuesday in Paris at 92, fit the category most beautifully. A willowy brunette with high sculpted cheekbones and penetrating eyes that seemed capable of looking right through you, she was a screen goddess who wielded a thoughtfulness that held the world at arm’s length, or farther.“I didn’t want to be an actress, I wanted to be a dancer,” an effusive Aimée, then 80 and looking back on a career that began when she was a teen, told the interviewer Charlie Rose in 2012. Born in 1932, she studied both dance and theater in England during World War II, and by the time she met the Italian director Federico Fellini in the late 1950s, she had worked with old-school French cinema luminaries like Alexandre Astruc and Julien Duvivier. At that stage in her life, she was more reconciled to acting than in love with it. It was Fellini, she told Rose, whose attitude made her understand that one could be serious in one’s work while still enjoying life.The two characters she created for him were not infused with joie du vivre, however. In “La Dolce Vita” (1960, streaming on Plex), she plays the ennui-besieged socialite Maddalena, who makes a sexual plaything of her ostensible friend and confidante Marcello, the tabloid journalist played by Marcello Mastroianni and based on Fellini’s days as a magazine writer. Contemplating escaping Rome, she talks of buying an island; Marcello chides her: “Your problem is you have too much money.”“And yours is you don’t have enough,” she replies flatly. Then she looks up and gives him a sly, closed-mouth smile. You can see why Marcello might swallow the insult.Three years later, in “8½” (streaming on Max, Criterion and Kanopy), Fellini once again cast Mastroianni as his stand-in, this time in director mode. In the role of Guido, Mastroianni is vexed not just by a crisis of creativity but also by the galaxy of women in his life. Sandra Milo is the indolent seductress, Claudia Cardinale is Guido’s ideal voluptuous virgin, Barbara Steele is a mod muse. Aimée plays Guido’s estranged wife, Luisa, the good thing he can’t hang onto. And while her place in his life is such that she doesn’t even show up until an hour into the movie, she’s the most luminous star in his cosmos — even if Fellini often hides her light under the bushel of what seem to be a deliberately clunky pair of black-rimmed glasses.Her performance in the title role of 1961’s “Lola” (Criterion), the first feature by the French master of fanciful and melancholy romance, Jacques Demy, is perhaps her most extroverted. As a cabaret chanteuse in a quayside bar, she smiles when she sees a familiar face in her first scene — an American sailor who’s more than happy to give her cigarettes and vino upon their reunion — and lights up the saloon. She later attracts the attention of a beleaguered young salaryman out of her past. She’s glad to see him, too, but as is so often the case with cabaret chanteuses in quayside bars, she awaits her true love, the father of her young boy. Lola is a relative free spirit with an open heart but a sense of limits; Aimée’s performance emphasizes the essential innocence, or maybe insignificance, of her flirtations. The character is a male fantasy in her work, a devoted mother in her home and ultimately maybe a mystery even to herself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Elinor Fuchs, Leading Scholar of Experimental Theater, Dies at 91

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      First as a journalist and later as a professor at Yale, she provided the intellectual tools to help actors, directors and audiences understand challenging work.Elinor Fuchs, whose impassioned insights into contemporary theater — first as a critic prowling the avant-garde scene in New York, and later as a professor at Yale — made her one of the leading scholars of the modern American stage, died on May 28 at her home in the West Village of Manhattan. She was 91.Her daughter Katherine Eban said the cause was complications of Lewy body dementia.Professor Fuchs specialized in dramaturgy, or the construction of a play, including its dramatic structure, its characters’ motivations and technical issues about set design and lighting.In conventional times, dramaturgy can seem to be an arcane, even slightly stuffy field. But in Professor Fuchs’s hands, it became a vital tool for examining the revolutionary new forms of theater emerging in the 1960s and ’70s, forms that complicated — or dismissed entirely — conventional notions about character, dramatic arc and authorial intention.Unlike many other theater scholars, Professor Fuchs first came at these questions from a journalistic point of view. After attempting a career as an actor and writing a play, she turned to freelance theater criticism for what was then a bountiful crop of alternative weeklies around Manhattan, including The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News.She found herself drawn to challenging works like “Leave It to Beaver Is Dead,” a 1979 play at the Public Theater that included a full-length rock concert as a third act. The New York Times panned it, and it soon closed.But Professor Fuchs loved it, recognizing the play and other experimental fare as not just a new take on theater but also a whole new, postmodern cultural sensibility — even though at first she struggled to explain it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Ian McKellen Is in ‘Good Spirits’ After Falling Off the Stage During a Play

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      The English actor was injured during a performance of “Player Kings,” and the show was abruptly canceled. He is expected to perform again on Wednesday.The actor Ian McKellen was hospitalized but expected to recover quickly after falling off the stage during a performance of “Player Kings” at a theater in the West End in London on Monday night, the producers of the play said.After a scan, doctors at Britain’s National Health Service said that McKellen would “make a speedy and full recovery, and Ian is in good spirits,” according to a statement by the producers.In a statement provided by his publicist on Tuesday, McKellen thanked the N.H.S. professionals who treated him. “To them, of course, I am hugely indebted. They have assured me that my recovery will be complete and speedy and I am looking forward to returning to work,” he said.McKellen, 85, who has been nominated for two Academy Awards and has won a Tony, a Golden Globe and multiple Olivier Awards, is starring in the play, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s two “Henry IV” plays, directed by Robert Icke. McKellen plays John Falstaff, a fictional character who appears in three Shakespeare plays. The fall took place during a battle scene, according to Aleks Phillips, a BBC journalist who was in the audience on Monday night and described what he saw in an article. “It happened so quickly that at first it appeared to be part of the performance,” Phillips wrote. “But the actor cried out and staff rushed to help.”After the fall, the performance was canceled and the audience left the theater. Tuesday night’s show was also canceled, the producers said, but McKellen was expected to return to the stage for a matinee performance on Wednesday. McKellen has often returned to the stage for Shakespeare plays throughout his six-decade career, including in recent years as King Lear and as an octogenarian Hamlet. He is also a fixture of the silver screen, including his roles as Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies, as well as Magneto in the “X-Men” series.“Player Kings” is in its final week and runs at the Noël Coward Theater through Sunday. More

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      in Theater

      How to Make Thrilling Theater About Climate Change Negotiations

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      A new play from the writers of “The Jungle” dramatizes the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a landmark climate agreement preceded by years of arguments over its wording.When the playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson were looking for ideas for a new production, they stumbled upon a radio show about the negotiations that led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.Some parts of the show, Robertson recalled in a recent interview, made the culmination of those discussions about lowering global carbon emissions sound “like a thriller,” with politicians holding talks in locked rooms and exhausted negotiators falling asleep beneath their desks.The pair thought that the landmark climate agreement could be the basis for another impactful stage production, similar to “The Jungle,” their hit about a refugee encampment in northern France. The problem was that the negotiations had dragged on for years before the agreement was reached in Kyoto in December 1997 — and that process was at times far from exciting. Most of the action involved representatives from different countries arguing over the language, and even punctuation, they wanted in the protocol.Climate negotiations “are so bloody boring in one sense,” Robertson said. “The challenge,” he added, “was, ‘How do we do take them, put it onstage and make it dramatic?’”Raul Estrada-Oyuela, left, the negotiations’ chairman, and Hiroshi Oki of Japan’s Environmental Agency shook hands as the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997.The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty ImagesThe playwrights’ answer to that question is “Kyoto,” directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, and running at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, from Tuesday through July 13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tonys Red Carpet Looks: Angelina Jolie, Brooke Shields and More

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      Broadway’s biggest stars descended on Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Sunday for the Tony Awards, an annual celebration of all the people — casts, crews and creatives — who make live theater the spectacle that it is. Since many attendees spend most of the week in costumes, the Tonys was also a chance to get dressed up and showcase personal style.The red carpet — technically a shade of blue — was packed with A-listers, a reflection of the star-studded productions that have recently overtaken Broadway. Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Sarah Paulson, Billy Porter and Nicole Scherzinger were among the celebrities who graced the awards show this year.Purple might have been the color of the evening, with several attendees incorporating shades of it into their ensembles. Men and women alike embraced bows, which appeared around some people’s necks and at the shoulders or waists of others. Of all the outfits, the following 17 stood out the most — for better or worse.Elle Fanning: Most Femme Fatale!Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesInstead of a shirt, the actress, a star of the play “Appropriate,” wore a silver necklace beneath her sleek Saint Laurent tuxedo jacket.Brooke Shields: Most Sunny and Sensible!Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sarah Paulson Wins Her First Tony for Best Actress in a Play

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      Sarah Paulson won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for her performance in the family drama “Appropriate.” This is Paulson’s first Tony.An Emmy winner who made her name in television, Paulson, in her first stage role in a decade, appears in the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play as a sharp-tongued elder sister who is reunited with her siblings to deal with their deceased father’s estate.“Appropriate,” which won best revival of a play on Sunday, became one of the buzziest shows of the year, partly because of Paulson’s star power.The role takes endurance. Set at the family’s home in Arkansas, the play is largely propelled by the reactionary anger of Paulson’s character, Toni Lafayette, who is seeking to protect her father’s legacy from mounting evidence that he harbored racist convictions. Her approach involves searing insults aimed at her siblings, played by Michael Esper and Corey Stoll.Thanking Jacobs-Jenkins in her acceptance speech, Paulson said: “I will never be able to convey my gratitude to you for trusting me, for letting me hold the hand of Toni Lafayette, a woman you have written who makes no apology, who isn’t begging to be liked or approved of but does hope to be seen.”Though Paulson has found fame in television series like “American Horror Story” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” — winning an Emmy for her performance as the prosecutor Marcia Clark — her career has roots in theater. And she was exposed to Broadway early on. After she moved to New York City as a child, her mother worked as a waitress at Sardi’s, a Broadway haunt that just so happens to be next door to the theater where “Appropriate” opened in December.Paulson’s first job out of high school was as an understudy on Broadway for Amy Ryan in “The Sisters Rosensweig.” (Ryan, who starred in the play “Doubt,” was also nominated in the leading actress category this year.)The nominees also included two movie stars: Jessica Lange for “Mother Play” and Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane.” Betsy Aidem was nominated for “Prayer for the French Republic.”Paulson’s win carried echoes of the Tony Awards in 2005, when her girlfriend at the time, the actress Cherry Jones, won the award for her performance in the original production of “Doubt.” Paulson, who was seated beside her, kissed Jones ahead of her acceptance speech, coming out publicly for the first time as being in a relationship with a woman.On Sunday, when she won the award, Paulson kissed her longtime partner, the actress Holland Taylor. More

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      Daniel Radcliffe Wins His First Tony for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

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      Daniel Radcliffe is one of the world’s most famous actors. But he’s never won a major award. Until now.Radcliffe won the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical, for his work in the smash hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” The show is Radcliffe’s fifth on Broadway, but the first for which he was even nominated for a Tony, despite mostly admiring reviews all along the way.Radcliffe, 34, will forever be known as the actor who played the title wizard in all eight “Harry Potter” films. But even before shooting of those films concluded, he had begun making the adventurous choices — onstage and onscreen — that have helped him accomplish the rare transition from child star to respected adult actor.In “Merrily,” Radcliffe plays Charley Kringas, a lyricist-turned-playwright whose long friendship and collaboration with a talented composer (a character named Franklin Shepard, played by Jonathan Groff) has imploded.Radcliffe’s enormous star power is a significant factor in the success of this production, which promises to forever alter how “Merrily” is viewed because the show’s original production, in 1981, was a storied flop.Radcliffe has been with the production since 2022, when he played the same role, with the same co-stars, during an Off Broadway run at the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop. The Broadway production opened last October, and is scheduled to conclude on July 7.He has repeatedly shown a willingness to try new things. Radcliffe first arrived on Broadway in 2008, starring in a revival of “Equus” that required him to appear nude; his next role, in a 2011 revival of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” required him to sing.He has since returned to Broadway to star in two more plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” in 2014 and “The Lifespan of a Fact” in 2018, and he also starred in an Off Broadway play, “Privacy,” in 2016 at the Public Theater.He has continued to make movies, many of them indie-ish projects including “Kill Your Darlings,” “Swiss Army Man” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”In an interview last month, two days after being nominated for the Tony Award, Radcliffe said that he keeps returning to the stage “because I love it.”“There’s something thrilling about doing something that scares you, live, a bit, every night,” he said. “And just the connection with the audience — being in a room full of people and feeling them react to the story. We’re very lucky it’s such an emotional show: There’s a lot laughs, and there’s a lot of comedy, but you can also hear people being emotionally affected by it towards the end, and that’s a very rewarding thing to be a part of.” More

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      Tony Award Winners 2024: Updating List

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      The Tony Awards begin on Sunday at 8 p.m. E.T., live from Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater.Follow the latest live updates and photos from the Tony Awards.After a very crowded spring in which 18 Broadway shows opened in two months, theatergoers and actors alike can finally exhale — and celebrate.On Sunday night, the Tony Awards will hand out its annual honors at Lincoln Center during a ceremony hosted, for the third year, by the Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose. A handful of awards were presented during a preshow on Pluto TV before the main ceremony at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.This Broadway season — comprising plays and musicals that opened during the eligibility period between April 28, 2023, and April 25, 2024 — featured scores of screen actors who took to the stage. Daniel Radcliffe picked up his first Tony nomination for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” (his fifth Broadway show); Jeremy Strong is nominated for his role in “An Enemy of the People”; Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane”; and Sarah Paulson for “Appropriate.”In a season packed with star-studded revivals and productions, 28 of the 36 eligible shows picked up at least one nomination, with “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stereophonic” tied for the most at 13 each. Viewers can expect lively performances and musical numbers from “Cabaret,” “Water for Elephants” and “Illinoise,” among other acts from Tony-nominated shows.An updating list of winners is below.Best Book of a MusicalShaina Taub, “Suffs” (Read our feature.)Best Leading Actor in a PlayJeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People” (Read our feature.)Best Featured Actor in a PlayWill Brill, “Stereophonic” (Read our review.)Best Scenic Design of a PlayDavid Zinn, “Stereophonic” (Read our feature.)Best Scenic Design of a MusicalTom Scutt, “Cabaret”Best Costume Design of a PlayDede Ayite, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” (Read our Behind the Scenes.)Best Costume Design of a MusicalLinda Cho, “The Great Gatsby”Best Lighting Design of a PlayJane Cox, “Appropriate”Best Lighting Design of a MusicalBrian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim, “The Outsiders”Best Sound Design of a PlayRyan Rumery, “Stereophonic”Best Sound Design of a MusicalCody Spencer, “The Outsiders”Best ChoreographyJustin Peck, “Illinoise” (Read our feature.)Justin Peck won the Tony Award for best choreography for “Illinoise” during a preshow ceremony on Sunday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest OrchestrationsJonathan Tunick, “Merrily We Roll Along” (Read our feature.)Special Tony Award for Lifetime AchievementJack O’BrienGeorge C. Wolfe2024 Special Tony AwardAlex EdelmanAbe Jacob (Read our feature.)Nikiya Mathis (Read our feature.)Isabelle Stevenson AwardBilly PorterRegional Theater Tony AwardThe Wilma TheaterTony Award for Excellence in Theater EducationCJay Philip, Dance & BmoreTony Honors for Excellence in the TheaterWendall K. HarringtonDramatists Guild FoundationThe Samuel J. Friedman Health Center for the Performing ArtsColleen Jennings-RoggensackJudith O. RubinThe Wilma Theater More